A space for discussion about issues raised by the pervasiveness of the web.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Social Networking: The Digital Tranformation

When I think of how race, ethnicity, and class play out online, especially in social networks like Facebook and MySpace, I think about how all of these various demographics interact with one another on such sites.

Having a Facebook page myself, I believe that social networking sites help bring people together in ways that probably wouldn't occur in real life. Since digital technology has and is evolving in ways like never before since Facebook and Myspace helps break down barriers between people and unite them.

One reason can be because of how people tend to be more open and communicative across the Internet rather than in real life. Going further, the ability to partner up and play games online helps bring people of different demographics together.

A recent example of this is the WordsWithFriends application, which allows multiple people to play a Scrabble-like game to build words and earn points. I realized that the game unites all kinds of people, like African Americans, Caucasians, Mexicans, and Arabic.

In a real-life setting, one would probably not find all these ethnicities playing this type of game, which speaks to the power of social networks and applications.

Here, real life isn't necessarily being reflected, but definitely transformed since people's comfort levels tend to be higher when face-to-face contact is not available, or not preferred.